


Parallels

by CloudDreamer



Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Mildly Dubious Consent, thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:14:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24356386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CloudDreamer/pseuds/CloudDreamer
Summary: Doctor Carmilla and Raphaella la Cognizi. If you asked the crew of the Aurora, they’d tell you the two had nothing in common.If you asked Ivy Alexandria, she wouldn’t tell you anything at all.This ended up more Ivy-centric than intended. No harm in that, I suppose!
Relationships: Dr Carmilla & The Mechanisms Ensemble, Ivy Alexandria/Raphaella la Cognizi, Raphaella la Cognizi & Dr Carmilla
Comments: 12
Kudos: 57
Collections: Stowaways' Shenanigans





	Parallels

The differences between Doctor Carmilla and Raphaella la Cognizi are at once vast and inconsequential. 

The older Mechanisms don’t categorize these differences on purpose. They don’t notice the justifications piling up. Ivy might have a database of reasons to like Raphaella that she checks compulsively, but she doesn’t make the connection to an older list, one locked away beneath layers of code and buried in dust. A compilation of events she’d prefer to forget, but she can’t forget anything. It all rises back up in her dreams, and those dreams she can’t remember always put the sets right next to each other. Raphaella with a scalpel and a smile. Doctor Carmilla with a scalpel and a smile. 

Physically, they share some superficial similarities— both have two legs and two arms, both have a head. But Doctor Carmilla’s teeth are sharp and her hair is short and red, while Raphaella’s wings arch out behind her proud and her hair is bouncy and dirty blonde. They’ll both wear lab coats, but Raphaella’s leave long slots for those wings, and she makes an effort to keep them clean of blood and bits. Where’s Doctor Carmilla strode, proud and always with a purpose, Raphaella flitters. From topic to topic, from story to story, from perch to perch. If Doctor Carmilla was feline at times, sharp toothed and unreadable, then Raphealla is a bird. Always open, always there with a word even if it’s a word that doesn’t make any sense. 

None of the older Mechanisms make their way to the lab on purpose, not unless she asks or if they need her, but if Raphaella asks, they don’t as much as think to say no. And she’s so quick with her ideas, so drawn into the latest story, that she doesn’t notice the difference between how Marius treats the place and how the others treat the place. Jonny listens when he’s there, listens and is quiet and his laughs are less common but louder and longer. And he keeps his eyes on her, not all over the place. Raphaella is flattered that he’s listening to her there when he never listens to anyone for any reason, and he only shoots her halfway through an explanation every couple of times. She doesn’t think it could be anything else. How could she?

Raphaella is not an idiot. 

Neither was Doctor Carmilla. 

Raphaella understands the story she is given. Doctor Carmilla was a monster. She gave them immortality they didn’t ask for — except for the part where they did ask for it, the Mechanisms think — and she broke everything good in them. Then someone who was probably Jonny threw her out an airlock, and then things were fine. Nobody corrects her when she assumes it was just the one airlock. Nobody tells her about all the times she came back. They paint her in all the darkest shades they have, and Raphaella understands. 

She misses the hesitation. She doesn’t see Jonny’s subtle half smile when he teaches her the last bit in One Eyed Jacks, imagining those first years when they really did roam hand in hand. Ashes skips Doctor Carmilla’s part of their song, laughs and says they’ll gamble for a story when Raphaella asks, and Raphaella, like a fool, agrees. She learns quick Ashes only loses when they’re willing to, and they’re not spilling, so she doesn’t push. That’s what’s right. She doesn’t see Ashes’s hands shaking, doesn’t realize she’d gotten closer to winning against them for real than anyone else on the Aurora had — since Doctor Carmilla. She doesn’t see all the little memories her questions stir up, of nights listening with one ear to her tales and rousing speeches as they drifted to sleep in her lap.

Doctor Carmilla, who is gone now. Doctor Carmilla who they’d fought so long and so hard to escape, but who, in the end, wasn’t defeated with a bang or a whimper. She wasn’t defeated at all. She just left. Packed up most of her bags, left just enough of her research behind for Raphaella to figure out the secret to immortality centuries down the road, and abandoned them. If they’d told Raphaella this, she would’ve said that it was a good thing, and it was. It was a good thing. It was an ending and a new beginning, something they’d long since given up on. None of the Mechanisms could explain the grief or betrayal they felt, so they lied.

For all her sharp edges, Doctor Carmilla could be as soft as Raphaella’s feathers when she wanted to be. She promised them each eternity, told them they were special to her, and although she never said _only_ when she said _I love you,_ they all knew she meant it. She’d hold them tight them when they cried and promised them it’d be okay, promised them there would be better days when the pain would go away, even when she was the one who’d made them bleed in the first place. And sometimes, when the nights are darkest, they miss her. Even Jonny, who promises he hates her the most. Especially Jonny, who’s the only one that refuses to forget her. 

Raphaella sees only the dark, because that’s what they want her to see. That’s what they want to believe, because it makes burying those years all the easier. If there’s nothing good there, then there’s nothing to lose in hiding from them. 

When Raphaella takes their survivors for her lab — a repurposed section of Doctor Carmilla’s which they all pretend is somehow distinct from the greater whole — the others look away or they throw themselves into helping. Ivy tries to understand, catalogues every experiment, offers numbers when Raphaella asks. She offers whatever Raphaella asks. Maybe it’s to prove something. She loves that shy laugh, the subtle sounds of air whistling through her wings, and their soft weight as they brush up against her cheek, and so her need to know where Raphaella’s hands are at every moment, her constant calculations determining distance to the nearest escape route, those must be the other signs of love. 

It’s funny. They’re so loud about all the surface level things, won’t shut up about anything else. But they won’t touch this, won’t acknowledge how thin those lines really are. 

It’s funny, because it’s a tragedy.


End file.
